Edwin Allan Grundstrom was born on November 2, 1915, in Springfield, Massachusetts. He completed his first solo flight on July 16, 1936, after only four hours and ten minutes of instruction (the average needed was ten hours). Combining that passion with another, he took up aerial photography. From 1936 to 1938, he worked for American Bosch Corporation (where his father was also employed), and a draftsman, and, later a photographer and commercial artist. He was hired as a staff photographer for the local newspaper, The Republican, where he remained until joining the war effort. He was also a photo contributor to the Sunday Union newspaper.
On June 2, 1941, he left Springfield for a position as a ferry pilot in Canada, but with no expectations that the position would lead him across the Atlantic. Immediately following that agreement, however, Edwin signed a one year contract to fly planes from England to Africa. In less than two weeks, Edwin departed Montreal on a B-24 Liberator en route to Newfoundland, then on to England where he was flying Spitfires and Hurricanes by early August. By December, he wrote home that he would be flying two-engined bombers, Blenheims, Oxfords, Wellingtons, Whitleys, and Hamptons. In his usually rapid grasp of training, he was cleared to fly the bombers after only one hour of fifteen minutes of education.
In February of 1942, Edwin signed a contract for a second year. At the time of his death, he was a member of the British Air Transport Auxiliary attached to Number Eight Ferry Pool in Sydenham, Belfast, and had completed training to fly Stirlings, the Royal Air Force's first operational four-engined bomber. Despite all of the potential hazards of ferrying aircraft for the war effort, Edwin died on October 7, 1942, as a result of injuries suffered from falling down a flight of stairs in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was buried first in the Lisnabreeny Former American Military Cemetery in England. The cemetery closed in 1948 and his remains were exhumed and transferred. He is buried now in the Cambridge American Cemetery, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Source of information: www.findagrave.com, www.abmc.gov